Years ago, I traveled to San Antonio to meet with members of the Children’s Television Workshop staff and view a new production directed to the Chicano community. It was designed as a Bilingual Education initiative involving the main characters in the Sesame Street cast.
The viewing and the meeting that followed was a disaster. The production shown to the group featured Big Bird sporting a sombrero, playing a guitar and singing a popular Mexican song.
The room erupted with cries of protest and the use of the strongest expletives our ears could stand. It appears that Big Bird was repeating the stereotype of the fat Mexican under a tree with his sombrero, guitar and a burro nearby.
The stereotype of the lazy Mexican under a tree that played out in many forms in history was considered the ultimate insult for a community that was emerging out of the shadows of a forgotten America victimize by Manifest Destiny, a notion that provided the moral justification for the United States to invade and annex half of Mexico. It took over a century to recover from the shock of conquest and the overlay of one culture over another.
The recovery was made more difficult by the fact that the conquered people continued to live in the same place and largely practice the same cultural traits under a new system that made them a politically alien minority. One constant was that Mexican American families never lost the connection to the land both here and in Mexico.
Learning and internalizing America’s promise was a very hard task that, over time, was successfully achieved. The covenant with the landscape included the acceptance of the notion that immigrants from the East that occupied the land were not invaders, but part of the evolving fabric of the country.
In 1978, I attended a very informative presentation on American demographics that located the Latino population in the nation in a rather interesting pattern. Although the community heavily populated the Southwest, there were little and medium size pockets across the country.
The Latino immigration waves that characterized the second half of the 20th Century and movement of Latino rural workers to the cities helped to convert those pockets to a very large presence with a sophisticated awareness of place across the nation. The numbers, the education, the business acumen and the patriotic commitment among others have converted Latinos into powerful force that can not be denied.
The 21st Century has so far seen a lot of Latin America join the immigration movement to the United States. It is clear that despite the significant effort to close our borders and deport recent arrivals, the foundation for significant changes in our demographics is already in place.
I am sure that when leaders like our 7th President Andrew Jackson espoused the right to expand and take the country all the way to the Pacific, they did not think that the land and its people would one day respond in the way history has dictated. The energy of Manifest Destiny made America a continental power and at the same time, set the stage for a future of possibilities to have their way as well.
A divided America sits on the crossroads of major change. Fear of that change increases our challenges and diminishes our status as world leaders.
Manifest Destiny was an ideal that impelled the country to do great things and model a successful way of life. That change created another one that we should also accept.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
